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Madge rushed up to join them. “Barbara? Judy? Are you two all right? I thought I heard—”
“I’m fine. Just totally and completely mortified. I tripped and bumped into the display case,” Judy responded. Holding tight to her purse and the box of baked goods, she turned and scanned the display case again. Smiling, she shook her head. “It doesn’t look like anything is broken. Maybe my day is taking a turn for the better after all. I was afraid this was going to be the grand finale to a day that went from bad to awful by noon!”
“Mine, too,” Barbara admitted. “I’m afraid having a bad day is become the norm. I’ve been more than a little preoccupied lately. Between reopening the shop, caring for the girls, and my Steve…” Her throat tightened. She choked back the grief still so heavy on her heart and wondered if she could ever function normally again or spend the rest of her days trying to exist with a broken heart.
Madge put an arm around Barbara and Judy. “You both have enough on your plates to warrant a lot of bad days. That’s why I wanted to get the two of you together…so you could help each other.”
Judy sighed and shook her head. “Some help I brought with me today. I can’t believe I was so clumsy.” She turned and looked down at the display case again. “I’d rather have broken something on myself. Bones heal. But antiques can’t be replaced. I don’t think any of the china is broken…but what if it’s cracked?”
“Barbara said that would be covered by insurance,” Madge insisted. “Now listen. This may not have been the best introduction, but working together to make sure there’s been no damage at all might be just the ticket.”
“The display case is pretty solid and the velvet lining should have cushioned the pieces that tipped over,” Barbara suggested.
Madge left them for a moment to turn the sign on the window from Open to Closed. “The last thing we need right now is a customer,” she explained.
“That’s true,” Barbara murmured. After walking around the display case, her initial hopes about the lack of damage were substantially reinforced, although she needed to carefully inspect each piece for hairline cracks that would ultimately affect their value.
The flush on Judy’s cheeks, however, remained. “Are any of the pieces cracked?” she asked.
Barbara caught her breath for a moment. Telling Judy the display case housed one of the most expensive or the most fragile set in her collection, which primarily contained imports from Germany and Czechoslovakia, would only add to the woman’s obvious distress. These white china canisters, decorated with multicolored wild flowers, dated back to the early 1800s. The largest canisters for flour, sugar, barley, rice, coffee and tea were intact, as were the smaller ones for spices ranging from cinnamon to mustard, and a pair of tall matching cruets for vinegar and oil, although most of the pieces had tipped over. “There’s no visible damage,” Barbara murmured.
Three months ago, she would have been frantic even to think the set might have been damaged, but losing Steve had taught her many lessons, not the least of which was the importance of life over mere possessions. The smile she offered to the other two women now was genuine. “If there’s any damage at all, it would be very minor. I still have to carefully check each of the pieces for cracks or chips, but I have to put the canister sets under the light on the work counter in back to know for sure.”
Judy’s smile was tenuous. “Minor?”
Madge grinned. “That’s what Barbara said. Minor.”
The distant sound of a tinny melody signaling a call on a cell phone immediately deepened Madge’s grin. “That’s my cell phone. I just love hearing ‘The Purple People-Eater’ instead of a standard telephone ring,” she explained. “I’ve been expecting an important call. I’ll be right back.”
While Madge walked to the back office in rhythm to the catchy tune, Judy checked her watch. When she looked back at Barbara, her gaze was filled with disappointment. “Unfortunately, I’ve only got about half an hour before the first of my afternoon appointments at the Towers, so I won’t be able to stay while you check the pieces for any damage. Why don’t you open the display case? At least I have enough time to help you take the pieces back to your office. I’d call to cancel the appointments if they were in the shop. My customers there wouldn’t mind a last-minute cancellation half as much, but the seniors…well, that’s not your problem, it’s mine. Anyway, as soon as I finish up at the Towers, which should be by five o’clock, at the latest, I’ll pick Brian up from the after-school program. There’s no way I can bring that child here, though. I’ll see if I can find a sitter. Maybe one of my neighbors would mind him, under the circumstances, and I can come back tonight. That’s assuming you can come back—”
“Judy! You’re rambling. Stop!” Barbara almost chuckled out loud when the woman snapped her mouth shut and blushed again. “Take a deep breath.”
She did.
“Now another.”
She did.
Barbara sighed. “Life is a whole lot more complicated for me now, too, especially when John has evening appointments, which he does most nights these days. But don’t worry about staying while I check the pieces for damage. Once we get them to the back room, it won’t take me long to check them over, and in the meantime, you can go ahead and keep your appointments at the Towers,” she insisted and absently smoothed the hair on the back of her head. For the first time in months, she felt self-conscious about neglecting her hair, but blamed her vanity attack on the fact the Judy was a professional hairdresser who certainly must have noticed how wretched her hair had become.
Judy smiled, however, for the first time since she had entered the shop. “I can’t thank you enough for being so understanding, but I can do your hair for you. After hours. During hours. At the salon, or your house, or mine. It’s the least I can do. I know you’re Ann’s customer, but I don’t think she’d object.”
Barbara swallowed hard and focused on retrieving pieces of the wildflower canister set. “I’ve been too preoccupied and too…” She tried to choose her words carefully. Judy was merely an acquaintance, not a friend, and Barbara was not prone to talking about such private issues, anyway.
“Too overwhelmed?” Judy prompted.
Barbara nodded. “Good choice. I was trying to think of a word that wouldn’t make me sound like I was whining.”
Judy set down her purse and the box of baked goods before carefully lifting a cruet from the display case. “Overwhelmed is just one of the words that came to mind. I could have said exhausted or overtired or stressed out or pressed for time or too proud to ask for help—”
“Who needs help?” Madge asked as she blew back into the front of the shop.
“Oh, not me,” said the hairdresser.
“Not me,” said the shopkeeper.
Madge gave each of them a hard stare. “‘“Then I’ll do it myself,” said the little red hen,’” she said, reminded of the old nursery tale of the little red hen who had to do all the work of making bread by herself because no one would help her until the bread was baked and ready to be eaten. In this situation, however, Barbara and Judy were not offering to help. They just needed someone to help them, and Madge was determined to be that someone. “Look, I’ve known you both for years, and I’ve been raising Sarah for two years now, at a time in my life when I thought I’d be enjoying my grandchildren, not another child. So I think I know a little bit about how much your lives have changed in the past few months and how much your lives will change even more in the coming years.”
She held up her hand when Barbara tried to respond. “I know my circumstances are also very different. I chose to adopt Sarah. You two are far more noble. You’ve both accepted responsibility for your grandchildren without question and without hesitation, all the while dealing with heartache I can only imagine. So…here’s the plan. You two get all the pieces of the canister set to the back room and finish up whatever work you have for the afternoon, but don’t worry about dinner tonight. I just talked to Russell about it. Bring the children and meet us at Mario’s at six. We’ll have a pizza party, then Russell and I will take all the children to the puppet show at Welles Park while you two enjoy a little free time.”
Barbara hesitated. Going out for a pizza party tonight was about the last thing she wanted to do. She was not really ready to resume a life quite that normal yet, even for the girls. And free time meant time to think, time for the deep ache in her heart to begin to throb, time to begin to pray, then stop, too full of pain to even remember the words to prayers she had recited since childhood.
“I haven’t had much in the way of time for myself,” Judy admitted.
“Good!” Madge clapped her hands once, sealing the deal without waiting for Barbara to agree, and headed for the front door. She closed it behind her, then opened it again to pop her head back inside. “Listen, you two. When you’re comparing notes and talking about being mothers again instead of grandmothers, there’s something you both have to remember, something this younger generation just doesn’t seem to understand.”
Barbara raised a brow, almost too afraid to ask Madge what she meant. Almost. “Pray tell, what would that be?”
Madge looked around, as if making sure no one would overhear. “Don’t even try to be a superhero. They aren’t real. In fact, they never existed in the first place,” she murmured, and promptly closed the door.
“Amen to that,” Barbara whispered. “Amen.”
Chapter Four
J ust before two o’clock, Barbara let Judy out the front of the shop, turned and leaned back against the door. She took a deep breath and carried the last few canisters to the back room which doubled as both her office and workshop, an odd blend of modern life and yesteryear. Along the right side of the room was a custom-built unit, housing the usual array of modern office equipment: a telephone, fax machine, computer, printer, scanner, coffeemaker, even a small television, DVD and CD player. On the left, a wall-to-wall work counter, set waist high since she preferred to work standing up, held shipping and packing supplies, a case of disposable, white cotton gloves, a hanging shop light and a variety of cleaning solutions and tools, along with the two damaged canister sets.
She set the canisters down, crossed the room and poured a cup of coffee. Carrying the coffee with her, she returned to the worktable, with the familiar sense of walking from present to past, from today back to yesterday. From sorrow back to joy?
She was quite pleased with the way she had handled today’s accident at the shop, but she was usually stoic throughout emergencies of any kind. When the dust cleared, that’s when she would allow herself to collapse. That’s how she had handled news of Steve’s tragic murder, the funeral, the media attention and the process of taking in her two granddaughters to raise, even reopening the shop. Two months later, when life had seemingly returned to some sense of normalcy, few people had any idea that she was coming apart or that her grief was still so raw that it swept over her in waves as spontaneous and uncontrollable as they were unpredictable.
When her arms and legs began to tingle, she sensed another episode about to unfold. She set her coffee mug down on the counter. Just in time. In the next heartbeat, a tsunami of grief crashed through the protective wall she had built around her heart. Deep choking sobs filled the room, and she wrapped her arms around her waist. Tears fell. So many tears. How many tears could be left in the deep well of hurt she carried within her? How long would it be before grief would relent and let her live in peace instead of sneaking inside her heart and slicing open old wounds?
“Steve.”
She whispered her son’s name and groaned. He was her baby. Her dream child. A loving, gifted man. A doting father. A Christian who lived and loved his faith, even when abandoned by the woman he had loved and married.
“Steve.”
He did not deserve to have his life snuffed out by a bullet small enough to fit in the palm of a child’s hand. He had been an innocent victim, shot while performing the mundane task of getting cash from an ATM, in broad daylight, in the middle of center city Philadelphia. No attempt at robbery had been made. Amazingly, no witnesses had stepped forward.
Steve was simply here one moment and gone the next. His children did not deserve to be orphans before they were even old enough to fully understand that once Daddy got to heaven, he could not come back. Would not want to come back. She choked back tears. She did not deserve to lose him, either. She should not have lost him. In the normal cycle of life, a mother died before her son.
“Steve.”
Her legs weakened. She grabbed onto the counter for support as she fell to her knees. Head bowed, she felt grief fuel the nugget of anger buried deep within her soul.
“Why?” she cried. “Why Steve? Why my son? Why?”
She drew in deep gulps of air and felt her tears flood her cheeks. She tossed back her head and stared up toward the heavens. “He was a good, good man. He was my son. You had no right to take him. No right!” she cried.
She listened to the echo of her words. She was so shocked by the harsh tone of anger in her voice that she caught her breath. Ashamed, yet too heartsick to pray for forgiveness, she concentrated on trying to breathe normally again and waited as her heart finally stopped racing. She held very still, hoping the grief would ebb and the anger would subside. Waiting. Listening to the sound of each breath she drew. Feeling each heavy beat of her heart.
And in the stillness, a gentleness surrounded her. She opened her heart to the Source of all love and forgiveness, yearning for the gift of acceptance and the peace only He could bring to her through His Son.
She bowed her head and gripped the counter even harder. “But the cross is so heavy, Lord,” she whispered and let her troubles spill from her heart. “I can’t pray. I can’t eat or sleep. Thanks to the media, I can’t get the image of my son’s wrapped body lying on the ground out of my mind. John’s buried himself in his work, and my shop…”
Her litany of troubles continued to pour forth until she was hoarse and her mouth was dry. Exhausted, she let go of the counter, leaned back on her haunches and closed her eyes. “I’m just a mess. My whole life is a mess. My marriage, my house, my shop—”
She hiccuped and wiped her lips. “And if I really want to win the whining award, I should mention my hair, too.” She shook herself and got back to her feet. She reached for her coffee mug, but the echo of Reverend Fisher’s words when she met with him last week for counseling stilled her hand. “Prayer can be just having a conversation with God. Talk to Him. He’ll listen.”
She repeated her pastor’s words aloud and wondered if today she might have taken the first step toward prayer. “There are no accidents in life. Only opportunities to open our hearts and accept His will as our own,” she whispered, relying once again on the wisdom the pastor had shared with her.
Barbara was waiting outside the elementary school at dismissal time with other parents and caregivers. The school crossing guard, Emmett Byrd, had his large stop sign in his hand, ready to freeze traffic on Park Avenue for his little birds who were almost ready to fly the nest again. Now seventy-six, he had been the crossing guard at Park Elementary since his retirement from the military some thirty-odd years ago, and his devotion to the children entrusted to his care was still as strong and unwavering as he was.
She scanned the crowd. Mostly women. Mostly younger women. Of course. She shook away memories of waiting for Rick and Steve all those many years ago. Rick had always been the first child from his class to rush out the door at the end of the day. Steven had been the last, dragging home a schoolbag filled with schoolbooks and books from the school library.
When the dismissal bell rang, she cupped her hand at her brow and watched the children break rank and fly out the door and down across the lawn. They slowed a bit, once they passed the principal, and again when they either reached the crossing guard or whomever had come to take them home.
The little ones in kindergarten were first to be sent home by their teacher, but there were only a handful. With so many mothers working full-time today, she assumed the rest had stayed for the after-school program. She could have kept her shop open until five, as always, and signed Jessie and Melanie up for the program, too. Unlike many other women, however, she had the economic freedom, especially with John still working, to make the choice to shorten her shop hours and care for the girls after school rather than have them stay with strangers.
When the first-grade teacher emerged, Jessie was first in line behind Miss Addison, holding hands with her sister. Barbara watched the girls and caught her breath as they waited for the teacher’s permission to leave. Jessie and Melanie were fraternal twins, as different in looks as they were in temperament. Jessie was built tall and lean, like her father, with long, poker-straight brown hair she wore in a single braid that coiled halfway to her waist. With a healthy dollop of freckles that spilled across her cheeks and sparkling brown eyes, she was the classic image of the all-American little girl. She was forceful, dominant and easily frustrated.
Melanie was the younger of the two by a few minutes. Shorter and a bit plump, with curly brown hair and pale blue eyes, she reminded Barbara of the children’s mother, Angie, who had not made any attempt to contact Steve since the day she walked out three years ago. Even Steve’s murder, widely covered by the media, had not inspired the woman to return or contact any of her relatives, for that matter. But unlike Angie, Melanie was so sweet, an absolute darling who wanted nothing more than to please everyone around her.
The bond between the girls was unlike anything Barbara had ever witnessed with her sons, Steven and Rick, who had been born several years apart. She had a number of books on twins which well-meaning friends had given to her. All she needed was the time to read them.
Maybe tonight?
“Grammy, look!” Jessie charged forward, dragging Melanie with one hand and holding up a bag with the other. Her backpack flopped around on her back as she ran, and she was so excited she nearly ran into Barbara while Melanie struggled to keep up. “Look inside! Look!”
“Careful, Jessie,” Barbara cautioned. “Give Grammy a kiss. You, too, Melanie. We’ll take a look inside your bags when we get home.”
They shared kisses while Jessie hopped from one foot to the other. “No, now, Grammy!” she insisted, then let go of Melanie’s hand and opened her bag. “See?”
Barbara, deciding to choose another battle to win, stooped down and peeked into the bag. Inside, she saw two large hunks of fabric, each a different shade of green, lying next to what appeared to be a page of instructions. “Oh, my. What’s all this?” she asked, even as visions of some sort of costumes that needed to be made flashed before her mind’s eye.
“I’m gonna be a frog! So’s Melanie. Show her, Mel.”
Melanie looked shyly at Barbara for permission first, then opened her bag. “See mine, Grammy? I’m gonna be a frog, too.” She wrinkled her nose. “I wanted to be the princess, but I didn’t get picked. Susan’s gonna be the princess.”
Jessie tilted up her chin. “Frogs are better.”
“Frogs are my very favorite,” Barbara insisted. She took a quick look at the paper inside Melanie’s bag and skimmed the teacher’s note, but she did not bother to read the directions for making the frog costume. “So, you’re going to be in a play during the Book Fair next month. That’s wonderful!”
Jessie grinned. “We gotta. Miss Addison said so. But we gotta practice a lot. Like this.” She handed her bag to Barbara, squatted down, pinched her features together, and started hopping around. “Ribbit. Ribbit. Ribbit.” She stood back up and grinned. “See? I know how to be a frog already, but Mel’s gotta practice more.” She took Melanie’s hand. “Want me to show you how again?”
Laughing, Barbara stood up, rather ungracefully, since her leg muscles had cramped. “You’ll both be great little frogs, but we’d better practice at home. After homework.” She took one of each of the girls’ hands and started them all toward the car. “Then we’re going out for a pizza party before the puppet show.”
“Pizza! Pizza! Yeah!” Jessie skipped her way alongside Barbara, shouting for joy.
Melanie just smiled. “I like pizza the best.”
“Not as best as me,” Jessie challenged.
Barbara laughed again. “What about frogs? Do you think they like pizza?”
Melanie shrugged, but Jessie squinted her eyes for a moment. “Frogs don’t eat pizza. They eat bugs. Ugh!” she said and stuck out her tongue.
They bantered back and forth until they reached the car. As Barbara buckled each of the girls into their car seats in the rear seat, she heard someone call her name and looked up. When she saw Fred Langley, the police chief, approaching, her heart began to race. Why was it that every time she could actually keep grief at bay, even for just a few moments, reality had a way of bringing it back?
She stiffened her backbone, planted as much of a smile on her face as she could manage as she waved the chief over, and turned back to the girls. “Grammy needs to talk to someone. I’ll stay right here next to the car. While I do, why don’t you two practice sounding like a frog for a few minutes?” she suggested and closed the door halfway.
With the sound of ribbits behind her, she was satisfied that the girls would not overhear anything. When the police chief finally arrived, her fear that her son’s murderer had been caught was almost as great as hearing news he was still at large and no progress had been made in bringing him to justice. As if justice could bring Steve back. “Fred?”
“Sorry to bother you like this, Mrs. Montgomery. I haven’t been able to reach your husband, but I thought I might be able to track you down here.”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
He took a deep breath. “I got a call from Detective Sanger, the Philadelphia officer handling Steve’s case. She said they’ve got a possible break in the case. News about possible suspects leaked out, so it’s probably gonna hit the news at five, maybe even earlier. She’s not gonna be able to get away for a while, and she just wanted me to warn you and your husband so you both weren’t caught off guard.”
Barbara closed her eyes for a moment until she could find her voice. “Have they found Steve’s killers?”
“They’re not sure, but Sanger said they had a gun. It’s the right caliber, but they’re waiting on ballistics, and there’s a lot of investigation that still needs to be done before any arrests can be made or charges filed.”
She struggled against images her mind had created to bring to life the monsters who had senselessly killed her son. A cold shiver raced up and down her spine. “Can you tell me anything about them? The suspects?”
His gaze softened. “I really don’t know much about them, other than one is seventeen and the other is fifteen. Sanger said she’d call you as soon as she has something further to report.”
“They’re just teenagers,” she whispered. “What kind of parents raised their sons to become murderers before they were old enough to graduate from high school or to vote? What kind of mother—”
“They’re girls, Mrs. Montgomery, and they’re sisters. That’s why the media has really grabbed hold of the story.”
Girls. Barbara nodded, too numb to even imagine two teenage girls as murderers.
“You’ll tell your husband?”
She nodded again.
“Is there anything more I can do for you?”
“No. Thank you.” She looked inside the car, wanting to shield the girls from the media. “I—I need to take the twins home,” she whispered, turned and closed the car door. Given the notoriety of the case, there was no way she could take the girls out for the pizza party tonight for fear of having reporters approach them. She did not have the heart to disappoint the girls, but right now, she had to call John on the private cell phone he carried for her emergency calls and tell him to come home.
Barbara heard John’s sports car pull into the driveway and looked out of the third-floor window to make sure. He was home. She popped the Finding Nemo DVD into the player, adjusted the volume, and leaned down to give each of the twins a kiss. “I’ll be right back.”
Jessie pouted and tried to pull out of reach. “I don’t wanna watch Nemo again. I wanna go to the pizza party and the puppet show.”
Barbara kissed the tip of her nose anyway and wished she had remembered a lesson she had learned the hard way with her own children: Never mention an outing until you’re ready to leave. “I’m sorry, baby. Not tonight. There’s ice cream in the freezer, though.” She tweaked Jessie’s nose and planted a kiss on Melanie’s cheek. “If you two eat all of your supper, maybe we can make ice-cream sundaes for dessert.”
